WHO: Nathan Petrelli WHERE: the Hyperion WHEN: Friday, October 21 RATING: TBD STATUS: narrative; complete
Heidi had died. It was an incontestable fact in its simplicity. Even though she had been brought back, she had still died. He had still lost her.
Four days later she was traipsing off to the grocery store after the whole hotel had been told to stay inside a day ago by Peter, a warning that had only heightened in reasonableness as things began to get worse. The notes Nathan had found, telling him of her location, had all been crumpled into balls. Bennet had been called and told in no uncertain terms that the 'hairspray' Bennet had mentioned stopping to get on the way back to the hotel had better come with one Heidi Petrelli or Nathan would forget that he was being a sane adult and parent and go get her himself.
It wasn't a mark of trust of Bennet – alright, at least not much, and one Nathan would never, ever confess to – and it wasn't entirely because he wanted to have the parental high ground. It was because he wouldn't go find her and yell at her. Not again. He had been scared and hurt and angry when he had lost her and it had come out with such intensity that most of the hotel had heard it and likely the whole hotel knew about it by now. He regretted it but he hadn't been able to stop it. He had vented, but what had it truly solved now?
She said she loved him, he had finally been hit by that realization after thinking back over their whole argument. She didn't want him out every night patrolling, exposing himself to those dangers, so that he was there for the boys, there for her, but what was this? It wasn't even patrolling, just a pointless run to the grocery store when more than half of the city had disappeared by this point. It was nothing that could not have waited until the outside was marginally more safe for at least one part of the day. After all, nothing about L.A. was ever safe, supernatural or normal, they had proven that, but there was such a thing as minimizing risks.
He wouldn't yell. He would stifle, he would suppress his emotions until they had been neatly compressed and tucked away beneath the surface. He was an expert at stifling, but it was a hard task when there was so much to ignore, or simply such strong things to ignore.
And there had been a mechanism in the past to aid that stifling.
The alcohol in the hotel hadn't been hard to find. Perhaps in respect of the fact Nathan was a recovering alcoholic, and didn't avoid the issue when it came up in conversation, it wasn't left out in easy line of sight, but there was alcohol in the hotel and he did find it. He poured the drink for himself in the kitchen without ceremony and then went to sit.
The glass he put on the counter, his arms around it, and stared down into the amber-colored liquid. It was a battle of will, a test of strength. To drink or not to drink. To fight the urge to drown his conflicts, to be the man he had been trying so hard to be all these months or to forget for a night the things he couldn't ever seem to communicate properly.
Not one drop of alcohol in five and a half months. He had even refused medicine with alcohol in it on principle, as proof that he could avoid all the alcohol in the world, that he could be a better man, that he could be the things he hadn't been in the past. A better brother. A better father. A better husband.
And for what? So he could watch his wife, the one person in the family that had consistently been the sane keystone, shrug off her death and gallivant around a city with even more dangers than normal. Why was he doing all of this, everything from staying sober to proving he could be the man she wanted to be married to, if she was now going to test fate to possibly not be here to see the continued results?
Because he loved her. It was another inarguable fact to him. He loved her, Peter, the boys and those who had been added to their family, like Sarah and Toby. He even loved his mother. All pieces of him, pieces that formed who he was, and he wanted all of them to be proud of him.
He knew they could be.
He stared into that glass in front of him and grabbed hold of the certainty that he was a better man. A better brother. A better father. A better husband. Even when he took one step back in failed intent, he was still better than he had been. He didn't know what he would do about what he was feeling, he didn't know what he would do about his wife, but he did know he wouldn't do it at the bottom of a glass.
Two minutes later, the alcohol in the glass was down the drain, never touched, the glass was washed and put away and Nathan had returned the alcohol to the spot it had last been.